Basketball Recap: Joseph City Takes Loss Despite Strong Efforts from Cort Miller and Eli James

If Joseph City was feeling good fresh off their 68-23 takedown of Ash Fork last Tuesday, their most recent game may have dampened their spirits a bit. The Joseph City Wildcats took an 86-81 hit to the loss column at the hands of the Fort Thomas Apaches. Despite running the score up even higher than they did in their prior game last Tuesday (68), the Wildcats still had to take the loss.

Eli James

Steals

01/31/25 vs Fort Thomas	5
01/28/25 vs Ash Fork	3
01/24/25 @ Grand Canyon	2
01/23/25 @ BASIS Flagstaff	6
01/21/25 @ Mogollon	4
+ 12 more games

Eli James and Cort Miller certainly did their best on Friday to avoid the loss. James went 9 of 20 on his way to 24 points and five steals, while Miller went 8 for 16 to rack up 23 points and four steals. James has been hot for a while, having posted two or more steals the last 17 times he's played. The team also got some help courtesy of Jaimen Tsosie, who posted eight points and five steals.

Fort Thomas was led to victory by Channing Wilson and Michael Olivar. Wilson went 10 of 15 from beyond the arc en route to 42 points, while Olivar dropped a double-double on 27 points and 13 boards. With that strong performance, Olivar is now averaging an impressive 15.3 points per game. Another player making a difference was Runyon Kinney, who had nine points in addition to eight rebounds and three steals.

Joseph City's defeat dropped their record down to 20-6. As for Fort Thomas, they are on a roll lately: they've won 12 of their last 13 games, which provided a massive bump to their 19-9 record this season.

Joseph City wasted no time getting back out on the court and has already played their next contest, a 76-63 win against Williams on the 4th. As for Fort Thomas, they also didn't take long to hit the court again: they've already played their next match, a 61-58 loss against St. Michael on the 1st.